A Tale of Two Dust Specks

This comic is based on research conducted by critical zone scientists Sarah Aciego, Emma Aronson, Lindsay Arvin, Stephen Hart, Clifford Riebe, and others. They found that dust provides important nutrients like phosphorus to Sierra Nevada ecosystems, often more nutrients than the granitic bedrock provides. Most of the dust in the Sierra Nevada comes from the Central Valley of California and the Gobi Desert in Asia. Dust particles are incorporated into soil and eventually taken up by the vegetation growing in that soil. Their results show that dust can play a major role in ecosystems across the world. As climate and land use change with time, dust will continue to impact ecosystems in the future. The researchers’ findings were published in two papers in 2017 (Aciego et al. and Arvin et al.).

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